My Top Ten Most Anticipated Games Right Now

Honestly I already have more quality games than I could even ask for. When I look at how many great games I have at my disposal, my only concern is living long enough to play them all. That being said, despite how great things already are, I thought I’d make a list of the games I’m looking forward to.

These are the games that I’ve been keeping on the radar. In many cases, some of them have been on my anticipation list for many many years. I have to say for the most part, there’s really not too much I’m waiting on anymore. Most of the games I’ve always wanted have already come out like, Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals, Enter the Gungeon, Ori and Blind Forest, Geometry Wars 3 etc etc. So it honestly doesn’t leave much for me to look forward to and that’s perfectly fine.

That said, here is a top ten list ranging from least anticipated to most anticipated games coming out in the future as it stands, April 15, 2016

10) Cuphead

Honestly, I’m not exactly jumping with joy with this pick but it looks interesting on the face of it. And admittedly it's probably only because of the way it looks. I think a lot of people are hyped for this title for the same reason. But seriously, I don’t really give a fuck about the way a game looks. Something inside me tells me that this one may be a glorified boss run with no meat or level design in between and if that’s the case, I’m not sure how great this one is going to end up in the end. That being said, I won’t know it until I play it, so it’s catches a spot on the top ten. Who knows maybe I’ll be blown away.

9) Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End

I’m not big fan of Uncharted because it manages to get away with pretty much pushing the player through a set linear movie, without doing very much in the way of real interaction. I’ve always looked at Uncharted, and games like Uncharted, like a Prince of Persia game attached to an epic Hollywood movie it’s ramming down your throat. That being said, what Sony and Naughty Dogs did with Uncharted 2 was probably exactly what they wanted in the end. What a game. If that title is anything to go by, I have high expectations that the developers are going to go all out in their last entry to the series and leave an impression that’s going to be talked about for years to come.

8) Yooka Laylee

Ever since Rare got absorbed by Microsoft, everyone knew something was wrong. Here we have a developer that was responsible for some of the most significant games of 90s, that suddenly goes quite. This British dev was practically considered Nintendo’s own Pixar but when they moved to Microsoft, everything changed. Without going too much into it, it was revealed that the developer was a total shell of its former self. Microsoft left the developer to its own devices at the start and touting their freedom from the hands of Nintendo. Yet, Microsoft as a publisher wouldn’t allow Rare to express any of their wacky ideas, ideas that Nintendo would have been fine with. Microsoft was always looking out for the company image instead of allowing the characters to look like the wacky gameplay concepts they were in. Apparently, this happened for years, leaving many of the developers, most partial to the techniques of Nintendo, staved of creativity. Everything that Rare wanted to do was stone walled by Microsoft’s boardrooms meeting where everyone had to agree. It was only natural that there would come a time where the talent would leave and eventually go independent.  Now Playtonic Games exist as Rare did in the mid-nineties and their newest creation Yooka Laylee is out to show the world that they’ve still got that Nintendo magic that Microsoft took for granted.

7) Danganrompa V3

I honestly don’t like anime and or anime culture. I know it’s weird and I’ll write a blog about it, promise. But Danganrompa took me by complete and utter surprise a lot like Pheonix Wright did when it first came out. I first heard about the game when I was researching hit titles on the PSP. At that time, it was only currently available in Japan. Years later when I was drinking at 2AM at the local bar, in a drunken stupor, I fired up the PS store and saw this weird game, translated on the Vita and on sale for like 8 bucks. I bought the game with a couple others and played the game on my Vita, the following day. At first I didn’t take this thing seriously at all, for the first 5-10 minutes of Danganrompa, it played like one of those corny anime dating sims, and even when there was this weird high school gimmick, it didn’t catch me, but for some fucked up reason, the game just grew on me and holy shit, did this game go places. This series, what started as some anime bullshit, has to be some of the most innovative shit I’ve seen this side of gaming. I am totally hyped to see how they wrap this narrative up.

6) I Am Setsuna

I’m glad to see Squareenix, take a chance and bring back their roots a little bit. Setsuna, is said to be a spiritual successor to the Chrono Trigger line of games, which in my opinion, is exactly where Square should probably be heading. I’m mostly interested in this game, because I miss the talent that Square had in the mid-ninties and I’m very interested to see if they’ve still got it. Looking at what’s been shown of this game, it seems like this game is going to quench my thirst for an RPG with a heavy narrative on sadness and compelling piano music. I’m in the mood something like this.   

5) The Legend of Zelda on Wii U

This game was supposed to come out last year in 2015 but then out of the blue it was delayed for another additional year. Now they could just be delaying it so it can get launched on the NX much like Twilight Princess was on the Wii but I actually suspect that they’re got a couple of genre defining, ground breaking, game design ideas that they’re going to be unveiling on the world with this new Zelda. When you think about it, we’ve seen like nothing of this game. For a game that was supposed to come out in November of 2015, we’ve have only seen that brief E3 teaser, short clip from VGX and that’s about it. And when you think about it, that was a trailer from the Game Awards was Link was pretty much looking around, doing nothing. I think Nintendo’s got something huge up their sleeve with this game and I think we’re going to be mind-blown when we fully learn about it.

4) Shantae: Half Genie Hero

I’ve always been a fan of the Shantae series but that love for Shantae hit an absolute high when I got my hands on Shantae and The Pirates Curse. What a fucking game. If you wanna talk about controls, gameplay, level design etc etc. Shantae and The Pirates Curse is your game. I wasn’t exactly freaking out with the GBC and DSi games, they’re amazing too but I’m telling you if you haven’t played Shantae and The Pirates Curse yet, do yourself a favor and download one of the best games the SNES never had. The game is totally Nintendo-esque, and manages to play like Yoshi’s Island, feel like Super Metroid and designed like a Zelda.  It is that last game Pirates Curse that managed to push Half Genie Hero up the list to number 4. I absolutely cannot wait play another one of these games, they just keep getting better and better.

3) Heart Forth, Alicia

The next game on the list only managed to edge out Shatae a little bit, simply because I think it’s full of potential. Alicia has been development for about a decade and looks like a crossbreed between a Neo Geo game and Ori and the Blind Forest. At the very least, it seems what I’m looking at here is a very solid Metroidvania game with some absolutely gorgeous pixel art. I like it when a game looks like they’ve worked on it like it’s the only thing they’ve got left.  

2) Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

So as you can probably tell by now, I’m a big Metroidvania fan. I absolutely love the genre. It’s a relatively newer video game genre that came out in the late 90s. Metroidvania are really the perfect model of a 2-D game to me. It manages to combine, exploration, discovery, experience, level deisgn, pace and bunch of other things in to one solid package that doesn’t get easily boring. But where would we be if not for Castlevania Symphony of the Night and the stellar lineup of Castlevania games that came out on the GBA and DS? If there’s someone who knows what they’re doing with Metroidvania, it’s the guy who started it all, Koji Igarashi. Once Konami pretty threw Iga to the the curb, (much like their other brilliant maneuvers) a solid Castlevania in the form of a Metroidvania was pretty much done for. That’s until, inspired from what he witnessed from Mighty No. 9, he decided to round up the rest of the misfit ex-Konami employs started work on what will probably be the most grandest vision of Metroidvania yet, Bloodstained. When you take a good look at what this game is aiming to do it’s absolutely mind-blowing; Local co-op, classic mode, music from the original Castlevania composers, NES prequel, biggest castle in Metroidvania history? What the fuck am I reading? It also will have a roguelike mode built in so it will destroy games like Rogue Legacy by accident. I absolutely cannot wait for this game.

1) Beyond Good and Evil 2

That said, nothing, absolutely nothing, comes close to the anticipation of Beyond Good and Evil 2. As I’ve touched on before, I hold Beyond Good and Evil, the original, as one of the best adventure games of all time, doing things in 2003 that we didn't see until 2013. Beyond Good and Evil is a dream game from Michael Ancel that didn’t play by the rules and managed to be a true piece of art upon its completion. There absolutely nothing I could want more than Ubisoft to walk on stage this E3 and finally show me that trailer I’ve waited 12 years to see.  Any you know what I think, I think that Beyond Good and Evil 2 will come out and show us what how games are gonna move ten years from its release. You can see in the eyes of every interview Micheal Ancel has ever had, this game has to be perfect for him, nothing else will do. Beyond Good and Evil 2 takes the top spot for the most anticipated. Hopefully in a couple years from now, when I make another list like this, it won’t be on it.

There you have it, I hope I've shown you a few new titles you may not have known about on this list. Also, make sure to get around to playing Beyond Good and Evil and change your life. 

Time to drink.

LOOK WHO CAME:

Chris Bradshaw